Note 63 — Chapter XIII · THE RELATION OF THE STOIC PHILOSOPHY TO RELIGION.

In a similar way, the Homeric theomachy was explained by many to mean a conjunction of the seven planets, which would involve the world in great trouble.63 Heraclitus, however, gives the preference to an interpretation, half physical and half moral, which may have been already advanced by Cleanthes.64 Ares and Aphrodite, rashness and profligacy, are opposed by Athene, or prudence; Leto, forgetfulness, is attacked by Hermes, the revealing word;65 Apollo, the sun, by Poseidon, the God of the water, with whom, however, he comes to terms, because the sun is fed by the vapours of the water; Artemis, the moon, is opposed by Here, the air, through which it passes, and which often obscures it; Fluvius, or earthly water, by Hephæstus, or earthly fire.66 That Apollo is the sun, and Artemis the moon, no one doubts;67 nor did it cause any difficulty to these mythologists to find the moon also in Athene.68 Many subtle discussions were set on foot by the Stoics respecting the name, the form, and the attributes of these Gods, particularly by Cleanthes, for whom the sun had particular importance,69 as being the seat of the power which rules the world.70 The stories of the birth of the Lotoides and the defeat of the dragon Pytho are, according to Antipater, symbolical of events which took place at the formation of the world, and the creation of the sun and moon.71 Others find in the descent of two Gods from Leto the simpler thought, that sun and moon came forth out of darkness.72 In the same spirit, Heraclitus, without disparaging the original meaning of the story, sees in the swift-slaying arrows of Apollo a picture of devastating pestilence;73 but then, in an extraordinary manner, misses the natural sense, in gathering from the Homeric story of Apollo’s reconciliation (Il. i. 53) the lesson, that Achilles stayed the plague by the medical science which Chiron had taught him.74